Tag: thai

And set yourself on fire you shall. Particularly after eating this atrocity I invented last night.

Software:
1/2 lb. Ground Beef
1/2 yellow onion, diced.
1 med. Red Bell Pepper diced (this is a chile too, btw)
3 Habanero Chiles diced fine (fresh)
3 Thai Chiles diced fine (fresh)
1 Random Chile diced fine (Seriously. I bought a fresh "Hungarian" Chile from Vons. 
                                       Who the hell knows what subspecies of capsicum it is.)
2 Jalapenos diced fine (fresh)
3 tsp. Cayenne Chile (powder)
4 tsp. Naga Jolokia Chile (powder)
1 can Chipotles in Adobo (only use 5 of the chiles or so, diced)
1 14.5oz can Ranch Style beans
5 tsp. chili powder (I use homemade, store bought is sawdust)
1 cup beer (I used Peroni, because thats what I had)
Garlic Salt
Salt and Pepper

1. Brown the ground beef in a skillet, once browned, throw in onion and bell pepper. Season with Garlic Salt and Pepper to taste.
2. Done! (just kidding.)
3. Or am I?
4. No, I am. Drain the fat from the skillet. Throw in all diced chiles except the Chipotles. Soften.
5. In a soup pot, stock pot, pot of some kind, combine meat mixture, and rest of the ingredients.
6. Cook until it tastes good. Or until you can't taste anything because the chiles have beaten your
    tastebuds into submission/mass suicide.

On a side note: I wish the preview pane hadn't gone away, but I do like the new post editor Tele.

So, there's this sushi bar down the street, on Flamingo and Fort Apache. The itamae there are part of some sort of sushi cabal, and they look at you like you're a freak if you can't put away at least fifty bucks worth of sushi in a single sitting. (For the record, that's about eight or nine orders of nigiri. You could choke a small dog with that.)

Savory, Tarthead, and I, brave adventurers all, decided to brave the rapids there. Savory was my secret weapon, my revenge for getting the you no eat sushi very often look. In the course of a typical workday, I've seen Savory pack away four donuts, two submarine sandwiches, and a plate of pad thai. Like most men with the capability to ingest several times their own mass in meat, he's freakishly small.

After dropping off the kids with a random stranger, we converged upon the restaurant and were presented with one of those sushi tick mark sheets.

I hate those sheets. First of all, I'm perfectly capable of ordering sushi in Japanese (I don't speak Japanese, but I do speak sushi). Second of all, with three people, two tick marks can be easily mistaken for an eleven. I've seen people mow through eleven orders of hamachi nigiri before, so that is totally not an uncommon scenario. And thirdly, yes, please, let us all handle a piece of random paper and then hand it to the guy who touches the uncooked belly meats that go in your mouth.

All of this has nothing to do with this particular sushi restaurant. I just need to rant sometimes. And it's going to be freaky in the future when you have to ICQ your itamae just to get your maguro pronto.

Anyways, having been given the paper bullet, we had to plan ahead. No problem; by the time we all had one order of something to eat, we had a traffic pile-up of little plates. This is a situation that the Japanese call frickin awesome.

And the fish? Yeah. The fish was great. I wouldn't say they're particularly above par on the fish I like to eat (for instance, the closer Hikari sushi bar has the best, butteriest yellowtail ever invented). The unagi was pretty standard, the tuna, delicious. Of course, I didn't order what the others ordered, and I can tell you they both have a pretty hefty recommendation for you. When they get around to posting...

Recently, I had someone email and ask, why do you call yourself a masochist? Do you like pain? And the answer is... "Yes. I love pain. The pain that is imparted by our friend Wilbur Scoville". (Actually, all that guff about someone actually emailing me is just a shameless pretense to bring up the Scoville scale.)

The Scoville scale measures how much burny you're going to get on your tongue from eating said chile. Yes burny is a word! Why not?

Since I love me some code tags, I'm going to put our version of the Scoville scale in them. Take that, Web 2.0!

15,000,000–17,000,000 Pure capsaicin
9,100,000             Nordihydrocapsaicin
2,000,000–5,300,000     Standard U.S. Grade pepper spray
855,000–1,041,427   Naga Jolokia 
350,000–577,000         Red Savina Habanero
100,000–350,000         Habanero chili, Scotch Bonnet
100,000–200,000         Rocoto, Jamaican Hot Pepper, African Birdseye
50,000–100,000      Thai Pepper, Malagueta Pepper, Chiltepin Pepper, Pequin Pepper
30,000–50,000       Cayenne Pepper, Ají pepper, Tabasco pepper
10,000–23,000       Serrano Pepper
7,000–8,000             Tabasco Sauce (Habanero)
5,000–10,000        Wax Pepper
4,500–5,000         New Mexican varieties of Anaheim pepper
2,500–8,000         Jalapeño Pepper
2,500–5,000         Tabasco Sauce (Tabasco pepper) 
1,500–2,500         Rocotillo Pepper, Sriracha
1,000–1,500         Poblano Pepper, Texas Pete sauce
600–800         Jalapeno Tabasco sauce
500–2500        Anaheim pepper
100–500         Pimento, Pepperoncini
0               No heat, Bell pepper

Scale courtesy of Wikipedia

Now, anyone who's never heard of the Scoville scale is wondering what the heck those numbers are up there. Well, basically thats the rating that Wilbur assigned each of the corresponding chiles using the Scoville Organoleptic Test. You'll never believe me if I tell you what the Organoleptic Test consisted of. Ready? Here it is. That's right, good old fashioned human test subjects. Ahh. The good old days. What peppers have I tried?

Everything on there with the exception of the Ají and the Naga Jolokia. I can't find them anywhere. But now I'm seriously considering spraying some pepper spray on my pizza at some point in the future.